William & Mary President: Timothy J. Sullivan
Term Served: June/July 1, 1992 - June 30, 2005
Preceded by: Interim President Melvyn D. Schiavelli 1992 / President Paul R. Verkuil 1985 - 1992
Succeeded by: Gene R. Nichol 2005 - 2008
Timothy J. Sullivan was the twenty-fifth president of William & Mary, serving between June/July 1, 1992 and July 1, 2005.
Sullivan graduated from William & Mary in 1966 with a bachelor's degree in government, a Phi Beta Kappa key and membership in Omicron Delta Kappa. After receiving a law degree from Harvard University in 1969, Sullivan went on to serve in the Army Signal Corps in Vietnam, where he received the Army Commendation Medal, First Oak Leaf Cluster and Bronze Star. He returned to the College in 1972 as an assistant law professor specializing in contract law. By 1977, he was a full professor and associate dean. In 1981 and 1982, he was visiting law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. He served for nearly three years as executive assistant for policy for then-Governor Charles S. Robb. Sullivan returned to William & Mary's Marshall-Wythe School of Law in 1984, as the John Stewart Bryan Professor of Jurisprudence. He became dean of the law school in July 1985. He is a member of the Virginia State Bar and the Ohio State Bar and a Fellow of the Virginia Bar Foundation and the American Bar Foundation.
He was given the Freedom of the Drapers' Company in London in November 1992 and was installed as a member of the Livery in July, 2003. In April 1993 he received an LLD (hon.) from the University of Aberdeen. He received the Outstanding Virginian Award from the Virginia 4-H Foundation in 1999.
Active in public service, Sullivan has been executive director of the Governor's Commission on Virginia's Future, counsel for the Commission on the Future of the Virginia Judicial System, a member of the Virginia Board of Education and the Governor's Task Force on Substance Abuse and Sexual Assault on Campus. In addition, he was appointed by Governor L. Douglas Wilder as chair of the Governor's Task Force on Intercollegiate and Interscholastic Athletics. President Sullivan served as chair of the Council of Presidents for 1998 and 1999.
Materials in SCRC
- Office of the President, Timothy J. Sullivan, Special Collections Research Center, Earl Gregg Swem Library